Dream a Little Dream by Kerstin Gier

TL;DR dream magic and teenage recklessness

TBR #1210 / 1097 (Nov 12, 2014)*

finished 3/18/16

*Goodreads likes to make me TBR different versions of the book when I only wanted it on there once. The audio version was #1097, but the hardcover was #1210. I need to revise my TBR to weed out these copies.

I read Gier's Ruby Red trilogy about three years ago (good lord I didn't realize it was that long ago) and it was kind of hit or miss for me. I don't remember liking it as much, at least in the beginning, but I do like the series overall. I have a feeling the Silver Trilogy is going to be the same way. (Is the whole name of the trilogy supposed to be italicized? Just "Silver"? I have no idea.) 

The narration style is very unique to Gier. I don't think I liked it when I first read Ruby Red, but I think this is one of the few times where I distinctly remember an author's style. Part of it might have to do with it being translated from German -- I'm assuming that fiction written in German has a different rhythm than fiction written in English, and I'm curious about how they compare. 

Honestly, the plot took a while to get going. The characters and the intrigue were compelling enough to continue reading on, but I felt like I was going in pretty blind. It was past the halfway mark before anything about the dreams was explained. The story felt unstructured and slow-ish for most of the book and then the end was completely different. I don't think it was done poorly, but I would've liked to have that balanced out better. 

I think there were more characters than necessary. They'll probably be important in the next two books, but I had trouble keeping a lot of them straight. (There's actually a character list at the back of the book. That's not all that promising.) The only descriptions I remember of characters is that at least two boys in the quartet were blond and had "angelic" or "honey-like" hair. Most of the characters blend together in my head tbh ;; 

Also, as a minor spoiler, Anabel's character development (of sorts) kinda came out of nowhere. She wasn't much of an active character for most of the book and the climax / final few chapters really confused. 

The transitions between chapters were also difficult to figure out sometimes. A lot like The Wrath and the Dawn, where the cues for how much time has passed are a couple paragraphs in rather than at the beginning. I think this is more of a personal complaint of mine than a negative aspect of the narration. Dream a Little Dream's transitions were easier to figure out, at least. 

I didn't bookmark many geographic cues OTL They mention in the first couple chapters that Ernest lives northwest of London. Or maybe in the northwest of the city itself. Not really sure. Highgate Cemetery plays a fairly important part, and is somewhere relatively near Frognal Academy, so I found a map of the immediate area. 

I also learned that the blog featured a couple times in the book is a real website! I'm assuming it's a promotional page for the series, but there aren't any links to other promotional pages. And I can't read German. Liv and Anabel's names showed up and that's about all I understood.

I'm most likely going to read the next book once it's out in English. I'm curious about how the story is going to continue on after the near-180 turn the last couple chapters took. I'm not content with how it was "resolved"  (temporarily) and I wanna see what other trouble the four boys and Liv can get themselves into. Hopefully the blurb for the next book will be more helpful.

(I know I complain about blurbs giving away too much, but this one gave away too little. Or actually, it did well with not revealing anything past the inciting incident, but the actual plot of the book was very "... where did this come from")

TL;DR I wasn't as impressed as I was hoping, but based on my experience with the Ruby Red trilogy, I won't give up on the series just yet.

Camp NaNo Plans April 2016

This is my 5th Camp NaNo! I love the November NaNos to death, but I think Camp NaNos are a little more fun. They're more flexible with word counts and they usually happen twice a year c: And cabins are really fun even if I never talk to my cabin mates OTL

In case the picture wasn't enough of a clue, I'm going to be working on Casanova this time! I realized during NaNo 2015 that I wasn't nearly as prepared as I needed to be. My plan was to work hard behind the scenes between December and March so I could attack the April Camp NaNo and fill in all the holes I left in my first draft.

... which didn't really happen. I've been doing really well with writing every day, but I haven't done as much research and planning as I was hoping. I've still got a couple days to catch up, so hopefully I'll step it up! (Probably not.)

My word count goal is 15k, which is 500 words a day. That's pretty low of a goal for me, but I'd rather have a realistic goal than overshoot and then fall short. I'm also going to have a lot of school work in April as the semester gets ready to end the second week of May.

I'm doing the same thing as I did in November and only counting Casanova towards my word count goal. I'm hoping that I can reach 25k total including Aperture and any of the other stories I work on, and I also have a stretch goal of writing 18k for Casanova, assuming everything goes well this month.

I have a couple more Camp-related posts coming up in the next month or so! I don't know if you can friend people like you can on the main NaNo website, but here's my profile if you wanna see my progress or send me a message! I'd love to hear from other people participating this April! ♥

The Summer of Chasing Mermaids by Sarah Ockler

TL;DR Elyse's discovery of her Plan B in life

TBR #1268

finished 3/21/16

This was one of the first books I wanted to read when I broke my library ban, and I was really lucky I found it on my first time back; I had only seen it only the library shelves once before November.

I didn't know too much about The Summer of Chasing Mermaids before I started it. I think I expected it to be a Little Mermaid-inspired contemporary retelling, which it may or may not be. I have no idea.

The plot is heavily character-driven, but it felt subtle. It didn't feel like it was a traditional plot with typical rising stakes; the rising stakes felt natural over the course of the book. The characters definitely helped with that, especially Christian and Noah's dads. Their personalities were the driving force behind the obstacles tbh.

There was a nice range of characters in the book. Elyse is Trinidadian and there's a big focus on her heritage through her internal narration and interactions with her family. Kirby, Lemon, Vanessa, Christian, and Sebastian all had unique qualities that made them an amazing group of characters. I had no problems keeping all the characters straight from each other and they all had a different impact on the story.

I think the depiction of the adults in the story was well done, too. The adults were given some depth -- the Kane parents at least, and definitely Lemon -- and they played more of a part in the story, both positive and negative, than I'm used to seeing in contemporaries.

(I need to read more contemporaries.)

It's also interesting to look at the point of views of the old white guys in the story versus the teenagers. I'm glad that the girls and the Kane brothers did everything they could to fight the sexism they faced and that they bent the gender norms all across the board.

     "[...] frankly, kids, I'm not sure it's even legal to have a female first mate. We'd have to consult the rule book, but as far as I know, regatta's a man's race." [the mayor]
     Christian's jaw ticked, just like it had with his father the night of the party. "Damn. Must've hit my head on the way out of that time machine. 1850, are we? I might need some new clothes. Elyse, you sew, right? Don't all girls sew?" (pg 120)

I feel like Christian's "playboy"-ness wasn't as big in the story as the blurb suggested. Honestly, that's good: he treated his relationship with Elyse a lot more seriously than I expected  he would. I appreciate that.

The romances and relationships in the book were treated with respect -- physical touch and sex weren't treated as taboo or something inherently "special" and "reserved". There was nothing negative said about the flings Elyse and her sisters had with the boys in Trinidad and Tobago during Carnival, or about Vanessa sneaking off with a boy at the bonfire. Most importantly, Christian asked for clear consent from Elyse and respected that the entire time. The girls all dictated their own relationships and sexuality without being shamed for it and we really need more books like this.

Also, that said, be careful if anyone tries to read over your shoulder. You might be taking some chances.

I did my best to do some research into the setting of Atargatis Cove since Googling the town name only brings up reviews of the book. Unfortunately, I didn't think to sticky-note geographic clues until late in the game :(

 Bandon-by-the-Sea (pg 250) and Coos Bay (pg 133) are real cities. A Starfish Point is mentioned a couple times (at least pgs 108 and 280), but the only thing Google gave me was a hotel a ways up the coast. Devils Elbow State Park is "an hour away" (pg 185) and Thor's Well in Cape Perpetua is an indeterminable "drive up" (pg 53).

There's about 85 miles between Thor's Well and Bandon, and I can't find enough clues to really piece together an approximate location. The map below should cover all the areas that I mentioned.



If I re-read the book, I'll be sure to pay more attention next time. I had fun doing this geographical sleuthing though.

I also looked into "Work Ya Way Back" by Bella Garcia that Elyse mentions a few times, but nothing came up. I did find this Trinidad soca music mix on YouTube (which was the soundtrack for this review) and that Ockler has a song embedded in her release day blog post. I also opened a lot of tabs related to soca music in my research for this blog post, so I'm grateful for the opportunity to be learning so much about Elyse's culture and the music that was so important to her.

TL;DR this was a really good contemporary with a great cast, including a non-American woman of color as the main character, and a great message of being yourself and calling your own shots.

The acknowledgements at the end of the book also have a wonderful message from Ockler. It's too long for me to type up, but I sincerely hope that her message and purpose have resonated with the people that needed to hear it.

If I use the soca music mix as my measure of time, I spent an hour and 45 minutes writing this. I usually don't pay attention to how long it takes me to write reviews but I really put some effort into this one. I didn't expect that.

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

TL:DR Murphy's Law to the extreme

TBR: ~#880

finished 3/18/16

I was hoping this six hundred page book would last two three-hour car rides. It lasted the first one, and then I finished the book that night. (I didn't need it on the second ride, anyway. I fell asleep for most of it.) 

This book is a pretty big monstrosity, but it's not hard to get through. The whole story is told through mixed media, including:

• interview transcripts
• IM logs
• security camera footage narration
• e-mails
• AI narration

The last one was probably the strangest thing to read. And very unsettling. Point is, there was no real narrator and the entire story is told through what data an outside group can salvage. That threw me for a loop a couple times. (If you don't like an unreliable narrator, Illuminae probably isn't your thing.)

The mixed media format also allowed for censoring out curse words, which is pretty creative, but I'm kind of torn about it. It makes the book more accessible and allows for more curse words to be "included" into the dialogue, making it more realistic, but blacking them out makes it pretty ambiguous. There were quite a few times where I couldn't figure out what was supposed to be there. Imagining the wrong curse word in the context changes the implication of it.

Anyway.

I connected with the characters a lot faster than I expected. Especially considering so much of the story can be considered "missing", since there's no digital record of a lot of what happened. All of the characters go through hell and the ones that survive are probably still in for more.

The story is really dark and the events have multiple layers to them that isn't revealed right away (and I'm assuming there are going to be more implications in the subsequent books). There are a lot of gritty topics covered, and I feel like they were handled well, but that also means that nothing was really held back. This is definitely nowhere near being a fluffy book.

CWs I can think of off the top of my head: death, unreality, injuries and blood, war, and gaslighting.

And I'm almost certain there are more that I forgot to mention. Keep that in mind if any of those are important CWs for you.

Even with 600 pages of content, it feels like the ending of Illuminae is really only the beginning, and I'm really looking forward to Gemina. It looks like the trilogy is going to work the same way as the Starbound trilogy in that there are going to be new characters each book. I'm excited to see how that's used for the Illuminae series.

TL;DR it's a really unique storytelling format and a really compelling but super-dark book.

As a side note, keep an eye out for cameos. I had a lot of fun searching for them and I'm almost certain I only found a few of them. 

Emmy & Oliver by Robin Benway

TL;DR relationships are hard

TBR #1307

finished 3/15/16

I think this was one of the most accurate depictions of interpersonal relationships in a contemporary YA that I've seen in a while. (I mean, I haven't really read many since, like, November ... OTL But that's beside the point.) I was amazed by how easily the story resonated and how quickly I got invested in it.

I think a lot of that was also because of my experiences last year as a senior in high school. I was in the opposite boat Emmy was regarding college, but Emmy and Oliver captured the feeling I had a lot of last year, with knowing the future is up in the air and that you're probably not going to see your friends much once the year ended.

(That feeling sucks, by the way.)

In all honesty, my senior year experience was almost a polar opposite of Emmy's, and yet I ended up sympathizing with her so much I had to set the book down at one point. My parents are so unlike Emmy's, but her experience with them (her mom, really) affected me almost as much as it did Emmy. I can't say I've really had that happen with a contemporary book before, especially in regards to something I've never felt myself. I had to take a break from the book and remind myself that it was a) Emmy getting grounded, not me, and b) something that would probably be resolved to some extent by the end of the book.

(As a side note, I'm not really happy with how that conflict was resolved -- it felt a little too quick. But it was nice to get a resolution about it.)

I really loved the main quartet, and I wish we could've seen more about Caro's troubles, because it feels like her struggle didn't get as much attention as the other three. I also wish there was a little more focus about Oliver's transition back into living with his mom, but he and Emmy are focused more on moving forward, so I can understand why it didn't get too many dedicated pages.

Also, Oliver is, like, my ideal boyfriend. I really liked the relationship in this book. (And Drew's relationship, too. That was cute and I'm really glad there was some focus on it.)

(And as another side note, one of the few experiences I do share with Emmy is babysitting twin girls, and I think she lucked out with Oliver's sisters. I wish I was as competent of a babysitter as Emmy. The twins in the book resembled the ones I know, which was a pretty cool coincidence.)

The voice of the narration and the dialogue of all the characters was spot-on. It feels like there's more cursing in this than other YA novels, but let's be real: this is still pretty PG compared to listening to teenagers talking when there aren't adults around. And their sass. Some of these I wouldn't be able to top.

"What island is that?" Oliver asked.
"Hawaii," I replied.
"Shut up, it is not." (pg 85)

"We"--[Drew] squeezed my knee again--"are going to Starbucks."
I just stared at him. "Wow," I finally said. "Because those are really rare and we never go to them. I'm so glad we're hanging out today."
"Could you please stop dripping your sarcasm all over my car's interior? [...]" (pg 187)

"Tonight sucked," my dad said, and I started to laugh hearing him say that. "What?" He smiled at me. "Isn't that the slang you kids are using? The lingo? Do I sound hip?"
I just shook my head. "The only hip I hear is the sound of yours breaking."  (pg 245)

(I can only hope to be half as good as Emmy with comebacks like these.)

The setting was never really defined (at least, not as far as I know), so I did a little sleuthing out of my own curiosity.

The relative geography clues I had:

• They're in SoCal (mentioned somewhere towards the beginning)
• Emmy's surfing spot can see Catalina Island (pg 85)
• There is also a restaurant called "The Stand" across the street ("PCH", I'm assuming Pacific Coast Highway) from the beach Emmy first taught Oliver to surf at (pg 87)
• There's a Starbucks significant to a scene (pg 187)
• There's a Del Taco somewhere within driving distance of their school (mentioned a couple different times) 
• San Diego is two hours away (mentioned in dialogue somewhere past the halfway point and in the epilogue) 

The Starbucks and Del Taco were vague enough that I couldn't pinpoint their location, but I did find a place called "The Stand" that would be at a good point along the coast to see Catalina Island. 

This puts the setting somewhere around Laguna Beach, CA. San Diego is only an hour and a half away according to Google Maps, but two hours doesn't sound unreasonable if you factor in possible traffic. (I've only driven between the LA area and San Diego once. I have no idea how long it took.)

Anyway.

Caro's runs to Del Taco have only made my craving even worse. Thanks, Caro.

TL;DR this was a really good contemporary and I love it. I'll probably buy a copy if I can get my hands on it.

The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh

TL;DR revenge doesn't get you anywhere good

TBR #1265

finished 3/12/15

Man, this book was beautiful. I don't think I can really do it justice in my own words.

I feel like I should first mention that I am completely unfamiliar with A Thousand and One Nights. I can't tell you whether The Wrath and the Dawn is a true retelling, or if it's like Winterspell where it's inspired by the story but takes the ideas and goes its own direction.

With that said, I really like how the ideas were used. I did some basic research while I was reading and I liked the different direction The Wrath and the Dawn took compared to what I read of A Thousand and One Nights. The narration style made it feel very unique and even almost fairy tale-like, which probably has something to do with my unfamiliarity with the setting and its culture.

As a geography nerd I'm surprised by the lack of attention I paid to the map at the beginning OTL. Despina says she's from Thebes, which I recognized as a city in Greece, but I didn't recognize that Khorasan and Parthia were real regions. Part of this can be blamed on my public school education that focused on Greek and Roman civilization a hell of a lot more than Western Asia. I also don't have much experience looking at older-style maps, so I have to admit the one in the book threw me off -- it took me at least a minute to recognize the coastlines.

I liked the care and detail that was put into describing the setting and the culture of The Wrath and the Dawn. The narration definitely painted a clear visual picture. Most of what I noticed was about the architecture or the clothing, and I don't know if this is just my attention span being selective. I still feel like I don't know much about the human geography of Khorasan, but I think that's also to be expected when most of the story takes place within the palace.

All of the characters were very faceted and there was obvious development by the last chapter. Most (if not all) of the characters fell into a morally gray area and I loved how the omniscient narration showed both sides of what was going on. It definitely made it hard to decide what I personally wanted to happen over the course of the story, because being attached to both sides of the conflict means you're gonna get hurt no matter what happens.

My biggest complaint is the lack of time-related cues in the narration. Some events that happened in back-to-back chapters were mentioned to be weeks apart in the dialogue, but there was no indication of that in the chapter transitions. A lot of inconsequential, mundane stuff isn't shown in order to keep the story stronger, but I don't think it was compensated for enough in the narration. This also made some of Shahrzad's growth feel too convenient and almost Stockholm-like.

(I really don't know where I stand in regards to the romance, so I'm just gonna skip it for right now.)

I also think it took a little too long for Khalid to finally explain his reasoning; there weren't enough hints up until the point that he finally told Shahrzad. I can understand the point of keeping the audience in the same kind of dark Shahrzad was in, but by the point he tells her, it seems like it's way too late for him to change the damage Shahrzad has caused and I don't know how that's going to be handled in The Rose and the Dagger.

On a related note, I think the magic aspect could have been explored a little further. There isn't enough about the magic that's driving most of the story, so I have no idea what kind of repercussions are possible. I like the system of magic and the implications of it and I'm hoping that the second book will cover it a lot more.

TL;DR it was really captivating, and it's a great We Need Diverse Books novel with a wonderful cast of characters. The book also ended with a cliffhanger, so I'm going to be watching the library for the addition of the next in the series.

Wanderlust: Las Vegas and SoCal

I've been turning to my experiences from our June vacation a lot in my writing recently, and with this awesome warm weather we've had the past couple days, nostalgia and wanderlust have pretty much smacked me in the face. Multiple times. 

So I went through my camera roll and picked some photos to compile them all into one post! I'm almost certain all of these ended up in the original blog posts I made, but they're spread out and I wanted to be able to look through them all at once. So I can torture myself even more.

These are mostly the photos I'm most nostalgic for right now, especially in regards to my recent writing, but by no means are these all my favorite pictures. There's too much of this trip to try and condense everything down to one post.

Library Trip: Mar 8, 2016

I finally got to go back to the library!! This was my first time back since early November, when I banned myself from library books to try and force myself to read the books I owned. (Didn't really work.) Today I was able to stop by on the way home from school and I don't think I can properly describe how happy it made me to be back.

There were so many books added since I'd last been, but I only had my school backpack with me and couldn't check out a couple dozen like normal. I really lucked out and found three that I was really looking forward to: The Summer of Chasing Mermaids, Emmy & Oliver, and The Wrath and the Dawn.  

They moved the YA section, so now there are two end cap shelves where they can display collections! They also use the top shelves to display some books face-out, and I think it has a much nicer dynamic than how the books used to be arranged. 

The sign at the top says "fairy tales retold: once upon a twisted time" 

I really liked this display, so I figured I would share the collection work of the librarian that put it together! (Thank you, anonymous librarian!!) It makes me happy to see the YA section get attention like this. 

Barnes and Noble Finds: Mar 4, 2016

Chris and I went to Barnes and Noble this week. (Twice, in fact.) I tend to take pictures of the books I'm interested so I can go home and look them up on Goodreads, and usually to see if my library has them yet. I figured I'd share the books since I was intrigued but didn't have the money to buy any at the time. If I can't support the authors through buying books, the least I can do is spread the word about them. 

(The first two I actually had on my TBR already. Go figure. I did find new books though!)

Perfected by Kate Jarvik Birch

Why I'm intrigued: genetic engineering. Interestingly enough, the synopsis on the back of the copy isn't like its Goodreads one. 

In Real Life by Jessica Love

Why I'm intrigued: internet friendships and Las Vegas

Zero Day by Jan Gangsei

Why I'm intrigued: political thriller-ish. This usually isn't something I'm into. 

The Smell of Other People's Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

Why I'm intrigued: the title. The book blurb is different than the one on Goodreads. 

How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? by Yvonne Cassidy

Why I'm intrigued: there's a map on the cover. This also has a different blurb than Goodreads, so I don't remember why I decided to pick this one up.

I haven't checked my library yet, but I think all but one of these were paperback copies, so I think my chances of finding them are pretty good. I know I'm not doing myself any real favors by adding to my TBR faster than I'm reading books, but it's just so fulfilling to wander around Barnes and Noble.

This will probably turn into a blog post series depending on how often Chris and I go to Barnes and Noble, and I might do one about library books once I get back into the habit of going again. 

The Prisoner of Cell 25 by Richard Paul Evans

TL;DR kids with superpowers fighting an insane scientist

TBR #1028

finished 3/2/16

Man, I feel like I haven't finished a book in forever. 

My friend that got me into the Percy Jackson series recommended this series. I bought the omnibus of the first two books when we went to Half Price Books on our Dallas trip since it was $6.99. (We really need some Half Price Books out here.) 

I didn't start reading The Prisoner of Cell 25 until after the spring semester had started. I didn't keep track of my progress on Goodreads, so it's hard for me to estimate how long it took me to read it. 

It took a while for me to become interested in the book. The concept was good, and I had a lot of faith in the recommendation of my friend, but the narration felt a little dull. Now, in all honesty, most of the books I read are written from a third-person or female first-person POV, so it's possible that it's just me being unused to a male first-person perspective. The only other series I can easily think of with a male narrator is Percy Jackson. 

I think a lot of my issue with the book was that a lot of it felt simplified. That's not necessarily bad, but it's not what I'm used to reading. A lot of the issues felt too black-or-white and a lot of the characters felt pretty polarized, moving from one extreme to the other. 

(I would personally classify The Prisoner of Cell 25 as more MG than YA, but it's in the YA section of Barnes and Noble, and I'm pretty sure I'm out of the demographics for the book.) 

I liked most of the characters. There wasn't as much depth as I was hoping, and the character development felt a little sudden a few times, but I think it works within the context. The book is focused more on action than the individual characters, and with five other books in the series, there's a lot of room for them to grow more. 

My favorite character was definitely Ostin. I really liked how he was a valuable part of the cast even without powers like the rest of the kids. The theory I had about him didn't come up at all in the book, so I'm curious about if I'm actually right about it in the end or not. 

My biggest problem with the book was Hatch. He came off as very "evil scientist", and there wasn't enough that made him seem like he had any redeeming or human qualities. He also had huge mood / temperament swings more than once, though that might be due to his abusive nature -- I don't have enough experience reading about abusive characters to say for sure or not. 

That said, there are some CWs for mental and physical abuse. Those poor kids go through a lot because of Hatch. 

Hopefully I'll get to talk to my friend soon and get his perspective of the book, since we have different interests and reading habits. It was nice to break out of what I normally would read and get to try another type of MG / YA books. I don't know that I would have picked up the series without knowing that he'd read it. 

I'm going to continue in the omnibus and read Rise of the Elgen (hopefully sooner rather than later). I'm not sure what I'll do after that -- if my friend lends me his copies of the other books, I'll probably try to completely catch up with the series. 

TL;DR I think I may be a little out of the book's intended demographic, but it was a good read. It's compelling once the plot gets rolling and it doesn't have any melodrama or cliches like a lot of other YA books have. I'm definitely curious about will happen in the next book.